The Peter Principles Series

How many of you have heard about or read the book “The Peter Principle”? The basic premise is quite simple. It is the idea that in a work place environment, given enough time and enough promotions, people will rise to their level of incompetency. Basically, they will get to a place where their skill set does not match the job requirements. In other words, they will be in over their head when it comes to the work. As this image illustrates, when they get up to that point, what may happen at a minimum, they may be demoted. At a maximum, they may actually lose their job. The book was written by a man by the name of Dr. Lawrence Peter. As I thought about today’s sermon, I realized that the book could have been written by the apostle Peter. Because the apostle Peter was somebody who, in many ways, rose to the level of spiritual incompetency. He rose quickly up the ladder of success amongst the apostles, but he got to the point where pride crept in and he experienced a bit of a fall. Fortunately, though, as we see in today’s reading, even though he fell, Jesus was there to catch him. Jesus was there to be able to restore him to his rightful place of honor and status. If you have your Bibles today, please open up to the book of John 21:15. If you have been here for a while, you know we have been going through the book of John. Fourteen months we spent on the book of John and today is the last sermon on the book of John and no applause please. It is a good book. I was kind of disappointed when I got to the end here because I didn’t like the ending. The ending in this chapter if you read 15 on, it is kind of a disjointed ending and it is all about Peter. It is a focus on Peter. I just didn’t like how it was laid out. It was a very difficult sermon to put together. But when John was writing the gospel, he didn’t say Chuck what should I put at the end. He didn’t ask my opinion, so that is what we end up with. John 21:15 and we will be reading right to the end of the book. (Scripture read here.)

We have to back track to Easter. You may recall the resurrection story. You may recall that Jesus made some subsequent appearances. He appeared first to Mary Magdalene at the tomb. Then he had a subsequent appearance to the disciples in the upper room, all the disciples except for Thomas. Then he made a special appearance behind closed doors to the apostle Thomas. Because remember Thomas wanted to be convinced that Jesus was alive. Thomas was the one that wanted to make sure he could touch him and put his fingers where the wounds were. He could put his hand in his side where he had been struck with the spear. Jesus appeared to Thomas and he told Thomas “You have seen and you believe but blessed are those who have not seen yet believed.” That was the second appearance he made to the disciples. As we saw last week, he made a third appearance to the disciples on the Sea of Galilee where Jesus was walking along the shore and he saw the disciples were out there fishing. Following the resurrection, following the appearance in the upper room, they really didn’t know what to do next so they did what came naturally, which was to go fishing. Unfortunately, as mentioned last week, the fishing that particular day was not good. Jesus came walking along the shore and said have you caught any fish? There was probably this collective no we haven’t. So what does Jesus do? He says cast your net on the other side and see what happens. Sure enough, they caught so many fish, I think it was 153, that they could hardly drag it into the shore. It is at that point that Peter recognized Jesus and he said it is the Lord and he jumped out of the boat and waded to the shore. Jesus was there sitting and having a breakfast fire for the disciples so they gathered around. It is in this particular setting that what we see is the restoration of Peter. If you have the New International Version, this section may be titled Jesus reinstates Peter because that is what is going on here.

Before we can appreciate exactly what is going on with this reinstatement of Peter, it is good to be able to go back and reflect on the life of Peter. If you go back to the early part of all the gospels, you see that Peter was indeed a fisherman. Jesus received his call from Jesus as a fisherman from his boat. Peter was so excited that he left his fishing business and followed Jesus. From that point on, he was a very loyal disciple. He was a bit impulsive. We have the stories back in the gospel where there was a storm on the Sea of Galilee. Out of the blue, Jesus comes walking on the water. The apostles were so afraid they thought it was a ghost. Peter said if it is you Jesus, you ask me to come to you and I will come. Jesus says come so Peter gets out of the boat and tries to walk on the water and begins to sink. But it demonstrated that Peter was a committed follower of Jesus Christ right from the very beginning there. We see ongoing stories that demonstrate the commitment of Peter to Jesus. One of the best stories I believe is out of John 6 when Jesus had what is called the Bread of Life discourse. He had just finished feeding the 5,000 people. He is trying to figure out who are his real followers. He starts talking a little bit strange. He says “If anybody is to follow me, he needs to eat my flesh and drink my blood.” Some of those people are saying Jesus you are getting a little bit too weird for me. I am going to get out of here. I don’t like this. It is about that time that Jesus turns to Peter and says are you going to leave too? What does Peter say? He says Lord where would I go? You alone hold the words of eternal life. Once again, what we see is the loyalty there. We see the loyalty of Peter. Then I think the greatest example of his loyalty, his knowledge of who Jesus was, happened when the setting was where Jesus was trying to find out what his followers thought about Jesus. He said who are people saying who I am? What are people saying about me? What did Peter say? He said some say you are John the Baptist. Some say that you are Elijah. Some say that you are Jeremiah. And he said who do you say that I am? What does he say? Peter says you are the Christ. You are the son of the living God. He goes on to say that “Simon I tell you that you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church. The gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.” At this point in the story, Peter is on this spiritual high. Could you imagine? Jesus Christ himself says I am going to give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. I have people around here get excited if I give them a key to the back door or the copy code for the copy machine. They think they have arrived. Here Peter has been handed the very keys to the kingdom of heaven. He has been feeling probably pretty high about this time. Probably feeling pretty good. Possibly even feeling a little bit puffed up. When you get promoted real fast and all of a sudden you have this new position you are feeling I have arrived. I finally made it. My ship has come in. As we know, what happens sometimes pride results in some sort of a fall. In fact, there is a Proverb 16:18 that says “Pride goes before destruction, the haughty spirit before a fall.” Isn’t that true? That is a great Proverb. As we see, that is what happened to Peter. Peter got really puffed up about himself a little bit too fast. I think he got promoted too fast. In some sense he reached his spiritual level of incompetency. How do we know that? We know that because remember the story about the Last Supper when they are sitting around and Jesus is predicting who is going to betray him. He predicted Judas was going to betray him. But he didn’t predict just Judas. He predicted that they were all going to betray Jesus. In the middle of that, what does Peter do? Peter stands up and says “Even if all fall away on account of you, I never will.” You get this sense of this spiritual superiority. What does Jesus do? I don’t have the passage on the screen but in Luke, he looks at Simon Peter and says “Simon, Simon” listen to me, “Satan has asked permission to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you Simon, that your faith may not fail. When you come back, you need to strengthen your brothers. You need to strengthen your sisters.” He is telling him that things are going to get bad before they get good. In fact, he went on to say “Before that rooster crows, you are going to deny me not once, not twice, but three times.” We know the story that he did do that. You get the idea when that rooster finally crowed, you get the idea that maybe Satan is back there just kind of rubbing his hands together saying Peter you messed up big time. You are not a follower of Jesus anymore. Jesus doesn’t need you anymore. You have proven to yourself that you are not loyal at all. You are a loser. You are not a follower. You don’t love Jesus.